How To Lead by Example
by Harold Trilby
Summary: The aftermath of the Omega-4 mission leaves Tali'Zorah worried for Shepard's safety. But is she really willing to do anything to make sure that Cerberus does not threaten her captain?


Cold and quiet were the two words that best described the interior of the Normandy SR-2. The drive core was as silent as the one that had been on the original Normandy, with even fewer heat emissions. This was one of the few things about the ship that pleased Tali'Zorah. Everything else, the various listening devices planted everywhere, that awful artificial intelligence, made it seem more like a cage than a starship.

But Shepard had said that she was going to be careful. Tali wanted to believe that the commander would be able to see a Cerberus betrayal coming. But as good as she was, she hadn't been able to see the Collectors coming. True, she had recovered from that. Cerberus had been responsible for a great deal of that though. If they were to catch Shepard by surprise, there wouldn't be anyone else to rebuild her. Tali didn't think she could take Shepard dying a second time.

The quarian looked over at the two engineers that answered to her. They had no more loyalty to Cerberus. The entire crew had chosen to stand behind Shepard and her decision to destroy the Collector base in the face of the Illusive Man's disapproval. It was further evidence of the commander's leadership skills, her ability to draw others to her cause almost without even a thought. It was nice to know that working for Cerberus did not automatically blind one from the finer virtues. Tali trusted this crew. They had proven to be the exception to the rule for their organization.

But there were other things that Tali did not trust. Quite a few of the devices Cerberus had been using to keep tabs on the Normandy and her crew had been removed, but there might be others that they had missed. EDI was still there, free of her blocks. Though she had said she did not answer to anyone but Shepard anymore, Tali did not trust her. Worst of all was the Illusive Man, waiting wrathfully in the shadows.

Tali sighed and wandered away from her station. She walked out down the hall to the cargo bay. Her footsteps echoed in the big space as she began to pace and she shivered a little. There were so many dangers besides the Reapers. Not only did they have to prepare for that unholy menace, but they had to deal with a galaxy that did not seem to care. It all troubled the quarian a great deal.

"Tali?"

She looked over. It was Garrus, standing at the doorway, seemingly surprised to find her there. Tali relaxed. The turian had been there when Shepard first saved her from Saren's men. They'd served under the Commander the longest of anyone on the ship. If there was anyone Tali could trust besides Shepard, it was Garrus.

The quarian nodded. "I thought you were in the middle of some calibrations?"

Garrus chuckled and shook his head as the door shut behind him. "And I thought you were scrubbing the engines."

Tali shrugged. "I needed a break. You can't stare at displays all day, you know."

"I suppose that's true enough." Garrus sat down on a small crate and leaned back against the wall. "Though one might say that after going through the Omega-4, staring at displays is a break."

Tali smirked to herself at this. The turian had a point. "No one needs to know that though."

Garrus chuckled. "I guess not."

Tali paused. Garrus seemed somewhat chipper, a noticeable change from his usual troubled self. True, everyone was in high spirits right now, what from returning alive from what was supposed to be a suicide mission. But Tali had her own suspicions, gleaned from the rumors that she had heard.

"So, how is Shepard?" she asked Garrus as she walked over to him.

The turian looked up at her with a puzzled expression. "What do you mean by that?"

"How is she?"

Garrus shrugged. "Well enough, I guess. Why ask me though?"

"I just heard that you were closer to her than the rest of us now."

For a moment Garrus was quiet, trying to figure out just what Tali meant. Then a look of dawning realization crossed his face. "Oh, well, sure, I mean, um..." he stammered, obviously quite flustered by this.

Tali smirked to herself and held up a hand to reassure him. "Calm down, Garrus," she said. "I'm glad you and Shepard are able to be happy together."

Garrus composed himself a bit. "Well, thank you, Tali. But if it's all the same... I'd rather not talk about it."

Tali nodded. She could afford Shepard and Garrus their privacy. There was no reason to go poking around in their business. If they made each other happy, then that made Tali happy. Keelah knew they both needed someone. Finding each other was the best solution for both of them. She had faith that the Commander would not forget about her, even with a romance going on. After all, she had exonerated her in the Migrant Fleet with a scathing speech to the Admiralty Board. Tali didn't think she would have done it if she didn't care about the quarian.

For a moment Tali was quiet as she thought about Shepard, her captain and her friend. All the dangers that Cerberus posed swirled in her head. Quarian custom said that she must do her best to help her captain, and even if it did not Tali cared enough about Shepard to want to do so anyway. But how was she supposed to deal with something like this?

"Something on your mind, Tali?"

Garrus's question jolted the quarian out of her thoughts. "Nothing important," she replied.

The turian leaned forward and put his hands on his knees. "We've served together long enough for me to know that's not true," he said. "What's bothering you?"

Tali was quiet for a moment. "I just don't know if we're even able to talk about it properly. I mean, all these listening devices..."

"There aren't any in the cargo hold," said a voice from the shadows.

Tali and Garrus both began to look around in surprise. They had not thought they were being listened to. "Who's there?" Tali asked.

Out of the shadows stepped Kasumi Goto. Tali knew her as the thief that Shepard had hired on the Citadel, through Cerberus. This made the quarian a little wary of her. She didn't know if Kasumi would side with whoever paid her in the event of a crisis with Cerberus.

"Ms. Goto, I hadn't realized you were down here," Garrus said.

"I didn't intend for you to," Kasumi said playfully. "If you had, I would have had to re-evaluate my skills."

"Do you come down here and spy on people a lot?" Tali asked, crossing her arms and leaning back.

Kasumi held up her hands. "I don't come down here to spy," she said. "Mostly I do exercises. This place is like a half-decent jungle gym. And if anyone happens to wander in, I just practice evasion techniques." The thief hopped up on top of a larger crate and laid out on top of it, kicking her feet idly in the air.

Tali still kept a wary eye on Kasumi. As nice as the human seemed to be, she was still a master of a disreputable and dishonest profession. Thieving was especially distasteful to Tali. Her quarian sensibilities told her that taking from others was a serious offense. But Shepard trusted the thief. So Tali tolerated her.

"Still feel like telling me what's wrong, Tali?" Garrus asked.

"Not particularly," the quarian replied, looking over at Kasumi.

"It's about Cerberus, isn't it?" Kasumi said. "If you're asking about the listening devices, it has to be."

"It doesn't take a genius to figure that out," Tali said, a note of annoyance in her voice.

Kasumi sighed. "I'm not with Cerberus, you know."

"They hired you."

"Money isn't everything," Kasumi said. "Cerberus didn't help me get back what belonged to my partner. Shepard did."

Tali regarded Kasumi cautiously for a moment or two. She was still unsure about the thief's true loyalties. Had Shepard really made such an impression on her already? The quarian almost couldn't believe it. But she remembered how it had been for her, when Shepard had saved her from Saren's assassins back on the Citadel. The commander had helped her, when no one else seemed willing to. True, it had coincided with the mission. But there was something about the way that Shepard had been concerned with her personal well-being, something about how she had made Tali's problems her problems, that had earned her trust almost immediately. That was just how Shepard was. And she had taken on Kasumi as part of the crew. If the thief had been privy to the commander's paragon nature, then it was quite possible it had earned her loyalty. Kasumi might be a thief, but she did not seem to be a renegade.

"I'm worried about what Cerberus might do," Tali said at last.

"Fair enough," Garrus said. "I don't think you're the only one who has that worry."

Tali nodded. "I know that. It would probably more shocking if I didn't have that worry. But still, it bothers me. You and I both know what they're capable of, Garrus. You remember that Alliance admiral, Kahoku? That could easily be Shepard."

"Cerberus was behind Kahoku?" Kasumi asked, interrupting slightly. "Doesn't surprise me. I've stolen enough from them to know that half the time it isn't worth the trouble."

Tali only nodded at the interruption. "What are we going to do though?" she asked. "Shepard hasn't exactly made them happy with this decision. I'm not saying it was a bad decision, just that Cerberus doesn't like it."

"The Illusive Man doesn't like it," Garrus said. "And as far as everyone on this ship is concerned, he can go to hell."

Tali shook her head. "I know. I know. But the Illusive Man _is _Cerberus, if we're going to be frank about it. If he says that action has to be taken against us for this, then it will happen."

"He's not going to do that," Kasumi said. "Shep's too valuable to him. He needs her around to save the galaxy. He's implied it so much he may as well have said it."

"What if he finds another way though?" Tali said. "If he can figure out a way to stop the Reapers that leaves humanity on top he's going to jump for it. And if he does, Shepard's not a commodity to him anymore. She's a liability."

The three of them were quiet for a moment. Then Garrus spoke up. "I could say that we'll deal with that problem when it comes around, but so many of the ones we've come across are there because of that philosophy. You have a point, Tali."

"Besides, waiting to deal with a problem you can see coming usually means you'll be a lot more desperate to solve it than you ought to be," Kasumi said. "At least, that's how it is in my line of work."

Tali nodded, glad that she was being validated. "There needs to be a way to figure out how to deal with Cerberus."

"Are you saying that we need to come up with something?" Garrus inquired.

"Well, I don't know," the quarian replied, leaning back against the crate that Kasumi was laying on. "Maybe we should. I don't want to drag anyone into something foolish though."

"Anything involving Cerberus isn't foolish," Garrus said. "Unless, of course, we look foolish when they take advantage of us."

The turian's brand of dark humor made Tali chuckle to herself. "I guess you're right." She looked at Garrus and Kasumi. "But, would you be willing to do this? Both of you?"

Garrus nodded. "I think by now it ought to go without saying I'll do whatever I can to help Shepard."

Kasumi nodded as well. "I'll admit I've not known her as long as you two have, but I'm still willing to watch her back." The thief smiled. "Besides, I've always liked being a part of secrets."

This satisfied Tali. The quarian nodded. "Now, what can we do?"

"What were you planning on doing, Tali?" Garrus asked.

She thought for a moment. "I was going to double check the ship's systems and look for something they might use to disable us remotely, or sabotage us in any other way. Beyond that, I didn't know."

"Sounds good," the turian replied. "I for one can keep an eye on Shepard personally. Make sure no one's sneaking up behind her with a knife for her back."

"I've dealt with Cerberus enough to know where to find the rest of the listening devices and tracking beacons," Kasumi said. "If I'm good enough, they won't even know they're gone."

Tali paused and thought for a moment. This was good. She'd not expected that these fears would be allayed in such a way. Things were looking much better now. Though there was still one problem that remained in the quarian's mind.

"One more thing though," Tali said. "The AI."

"You mean EDI?" Garrus asked.

"Yes," the quarian replied. "I'm worried about it being compromised."

"Didn't she say that she wasn't able to be compromised?" Kasumi asked. "Or was I hearing things?"

"It is also capable of telling jokes," Tali said. "Lying to protect itself does not seem out of the realm of possibility."

Kasumi chuckled. "You'd better be glad I can cut us off from the rest of the ship. If I was her I would be unhappy with you talking about me like this."

Tali sighed. "I'm not saying it would betray us intentionally. But don't you think that those who created it would have some way to turn it back to their side?"

There was silence for a moment. "It's plausible," Garrus said at last.

Tali nodded. "We need to figure out a way to disable it. Just in case."

"Not to state the obvious, but I don't think the three of us have the know-how to go fiddling around in an AI core," Kasumi said. "At least, not that subtly."

Tali had to agree with this. Even though she had quite a bit of experience fiddling around with geth AI cores, she had never particularly worried about keeping it secret that she was doing so. And this was a human AI core. Things could be very different than she was used to.

"Perhaps we might be of assistance," said another voice, this one electronic in nature.

Tali froze. She knew to whom the voice belonged without even having to turn around. It was not a voice that she had ever thought she would hear, but that she still dreaded. She looked. Legion was standing there, single optic receptor looking over everything. The sight was one that the quarian had always been taught to react to on instinct. She readied her omni-tool, her blood running cold.

She felt a hand on her shoulder. Tali turned sharply, almost angered at this attempt to hold her back from doing what needed to be done. It was Garrus, slowly shaking his head, reminding her without words of the fact that Shepard had accepted this geth. The quarian paused for a moment longer, then lowered her omni-tool, remembering what the Commander had said to her when she had confronted Legion earlier. For better or for worse, she did not want to disappoint Shepard.

"What could you do, Legion?" Kasumi asked, sitting up on the edge of the crate.

"We have familiarity with the structures of AI cores," the geth said, walking forward a little bit. Tali backed away, still leery of the synthetic. It did not seem to notice this. "If the possible over-ride of this ship's AI threatens Shepard-Commander, then we will do what we can to prevent such an eventuality from occurring."

"Why should we trust you?" Tali asked, not even bothering to hide the disdain in her voice.

Legion turned and looked at Tali, the expressive plates around its eye slightly raised. "While you may not trust us, Tali-Creator, we maintain that we desire the same thing you do, the preservation of Shepard-Commander. She has aided us in bringing the heretics back into the fold. We are indebted to her."

"How do we know you won't just take the ship?" Tali asked.

"We do not have operational knowledge of anything beyond our mobile platforms," Legion said. "We would do more harm than good, were we to attempt a transfer into the Normandy's systems."

Tali thought that was putting it mildly, but she kept it to herself. She still did not want to trust Legion. After all, it was a geth. Part of her told her that she was wrong to allow it to still stand. But another part of her held back and whispered Shepard's words to her. She remembered what the commander had said before the Admiralty Board, when she had defended Tali after they had returned from the Alarei. She remembered what the commander had said to both her and Legion, when she had found them arguing. And she thought about those words.

The quarian was quiet. Shepard had warned both her and Legion that the war needed to end. Tali had always thought to herself that the war would end when the geth were gone away, and her people were able to set foot upon their homeworld again. But that was what Xen and Han both thought, wasn't it? And what had Shepard thought of them? True, she seemed to understand their desire to reclaim what had once been theirs, but she had looked down upon how they wanted to attain it. They were continuing the old ways, the ways that had brought about the exile of the quarians and the creation of the Migrant Fleet in the first place. Was that what Tali was doing, however unintentionally?

Someone was going to have to give ground somewhere. Legion had said that the geth would be willing to give the quarians back their homeworld. But, if this was true, would her people ever really believe it? Would they want to be granted mercy by those that had exiled them centuries ago? They would not do it spontaneously. Someone would have to show them. Some small acts by one or two among them, working with the geth towards a common end, would have to happen before anything greater might come about.

Tali shook her head. Surely this couldn't be one of them. What was she even doing thinking about this at the moment? What did Cerberus have to do with this conflict? This here was something completely different, unrelated to the problems between the quarians and the geth. And yet, she knew this wasn't true. If there was one thing she had seen in her travels with Shepard it was that things that started small could grow and travel until they were mighty. Every action had an effect. Could working together with Legion to help keep Cerberus off of Shepard really lead to what Tali hoped for? The quarian didn't know. But, there was one way to find out.

"You... would... what would you do, exactly?" she asked Legion.

"We would examine the connections that the AI had to this vessel, and we would determine quick ways to sever them," the geth replied. "In the event that Cerberus would attempt to control us through the AI, we would enact these measures, preserving both the AI and all the crew. Is this satisfactory, Tali-Creator?"

It was quite satisfactory. But saying that it was turned out to be harder than Tali thought it would be. She knew what saying it would mean, what it would commit her to. That staunch quarian side of her told her to reject this and turn Legion away. But she shook her head. That wasn't what Shepard would do. If Tali was in danger, she knew that Shepard would do anything short of ally herself with a Reaper to try and help her. The least that she could do was work with a geth in return.

She nodded. "It is good. And it ties up our last loose end."

Legion looked from her to Garrus, then from Garrus to Kasumi. "Are the four of us entered into a pact then, to protect Shepard-Commander from Cerberus and the Illusive Man?"

Kasumi shrugged. "I don't know. It's up to the old guard here." She pointed to Garrus and Tali.

"I think we are," Garrus said, nodding his head. He looked to Tali.

She nodded. "We're together on this. Shepard's helped us, so we'll help her."

Legion nodded. "We have reached a consensus then. We are to preserve Shepard-Commander."

"Lets keep it between just the four of us though," Tali said. "Not that I don't trust anyone else, but we can't just go talking about this all over the ship. The fewer people it stays among, the less of a chance there is that we'll slip up and give Cerberus a clue as to what has happened."

"Smart enough," Kasumi said, hopping down. "Do we need to keep having little clubhouse meetings, or is this the only time we talk about this together?"

"Unless there's a problem, we won't need to meet together like this," Garrus said. "I think we can trust each other enough to do what must be done."

Could they? Tali looked over at Legion and wondered if she really did trust the geth. She doubted it. But she trusted Shepard. She just had to keep reminding herself of that. If Shepard could trust Legion, then she could as well. After all, Shepard herself could very well depend on it. She had given so much for Tali and the others. The time had come for Tali to do the same.

"I agree with Garrus," she said. "If we need to meet again, it will be because we suspect Cerberus is moving against Shepard. If that's the case, we'll need something to signify what is going on."

"Cabinet," Legion said.

The other three looked at the geth with puzzled expressions. "What do you mean by that?" Garrus asked.

"It is a thoughtless word," Legion said. "Yet we do not say it to each other in regular conversation. Therefore, it is more likely to be noticed by any of us four when it is said. It will suffice as a signal."

Tali nodded. "It works," she said. "Then lets get back to our posts. We know what we have to do. Just, before we go, thank you."

Legion paused at this, its expressive flaps raised up. "Do you extend thanks to us as well, Creator-Tali?"

The quarian closed her eyes. Did the geth really have to ask about it? It sure wasn't making things easier for her. It was just another baby step though. Tali hoped that it would be for the best in the end.

"Yes, Legion," she replied at last. "I thank you too."

The geth was quiet for a moment, its expressive flaps bunching up and down. "Then we give you thanks as well, Creator-Tali," it said. Then Legion turned and walked out of the cargo bay, the door closing behind it.

Garrus patted Tali on the back. "You did well," he said to her.

"I hope so," she said, putting a hand to her helmet.

"It would have made her proud, I think," the turian said reassuringly, putting an arm around Tali's shoulders and giving her a friendly hug. "At the very least, you impressed me. How about you, Kasumi?" But there was no answer. The thief had already left, as quiet as ever.

Tali sighed. This was a great deal more than she would have imagined it might have been. But she was going to stick with it. Shepard had come through for her in the past. Now she had a chance to pay back that favor. There was no way she was just going to let it pass on by. By the ancestors, she would follow this to whatever end, just as she would follow Shepard to any end. It was only right.

* * *

_ I usually don't mess around with canon characters whenever I write fanfiction. I'm always afraid that I'm going to portray them incorrectly somehow, and that it will be horribly offensive to others. But, I had this idea come upon me yesterday, and I had to work it out. If nothing else, it's a chance for me to write a story with my four favorite teammates from Mass Effect 2 in it._


End file.
